


Paranormal Cat-tivity

by andavs



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M, i don't even know what i'm doing anymore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-05
Updated: 2014-07-05
Packaged: 2018-02-07 15:24:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,106
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1904049
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andavs/pseuds/andavs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles thought they should be best friends because they had the same eye color. Derek was pretty sure that just meant the cat had killed someone.</p><p>Or, Stiles’ cat is an asshole and so is the poltergeist in his apartment.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Paranormal Cat-tivity

**Author's Note:**

> This was supposed to be a little drabble about an asshole cat, but it completely ran away from me.

Derek stared.

Dale hissed.

Dale was an asshole.

Derek shut the door behind him, watching the cat watching him, and took a few steps into the apartment. The cat didn’t so much as twitch, she was far too dignified for that. She just stood in the doorway to the kitchen, her unblinking bright blue eyes glued to his every movement, and _waited._

Stiles thought they should be best friends because they had the same eye color. Derek was pretty sure that just meant the cat had killed someone.

Dale—and what the fuck kind of name for a cat is _Dale,_ Stiles—had a face that would be adorable if Derek hadn’t known she was made up of pure spite and hatred for anyone but Stiles and Allison. He actually wished she turned out to be some kind of horrible monster in disguise just so they could get rid of her once and for all. Scott agreed, Derek knew he did, but the suck up would never admit that to Stiles.

To be fair, Stiles probably didn’t even know just how demonic his cat was; she was the perfect white and fluffy angel around the humans, and none of the wolves wanted to admit to a rivalry with a cat—assuming she actually was a cat. She looked like some massive breed specific to one very small region of Siberia that roamed the frozen land and ate lost travelers who wandered too far from the path. Dramatic, sure, but that animal was _mean._

And _Stiles_ was mean for asking a werewolf to take care of her for a week.

It wasn’t like Derek wanted to take his place, in Seattle with Scott and Isaac trying to hammer out a treaty with a pack notorious for being dicks of the highest order so Isaac could go to grad school in their territory, but why couldn’t the Sheriff have done this? Deaton? Allison? The pound? The butcher on Fifth? Literally _anyone else?_

Judging by Dale’s expression, she was having the same thought.

He kicked off his shoes and hung his jacket on the back of a dining chair. The last time he hadn’t, Dale had rubbed all over it while looking him dead in the eye in a silent challenge and he’d smelled like cat litter for two weeks. When he looked back, Dale still hadn’t moved, standing right in the only path to where he needed to be. He knew from both her posture and experience that she was going to take a swipe at his leg if he tried to step over her, but if he tried to move her she would take a chunk out of his face.

He healed quickly, but it was degrading essentially getting bitchslapped by a cat.

Sure enough, he stepped over her and couldn’t hold back the growl that slipped out when her razor sharp little claws ripped through his jeans into his calf. She hissed in response and darted away to pout behind the couch and shred the baseboards.

“I’m coming to _feed_ you, idiot.” He growled after her, then he realized he was talking to a cat and hated Stiles a little bit more.

As promised, there was a note stuck to the fridge with food instructions scrawled in Stiles’ messy but legible handwriting. When he’d agreed to do this, Derek was led to believe it meant coming in once a day, dumping some dry food into a bowl, refilling her water, and occasionally scooping out her litterbox (and how could an animal be so smug about everything when it shat in a box, honestly), but the _legal size_ sheet of paper covered with step-by-step instructions said that Stiles had seriously downplayed the complexity of it. And it was just like Stiles to turn something like feeding his cat into bomb disposal.

One fifth of one can, one fifth of another, mixed with exactly two tablespoons of water, then fifteen minutes later half a scoop of dry food, fifteen minutes after that another scoop, three times a day, but in the mornings only one sixth of— _“Are you kidding me, Stiles?”_

He glared at the feeding schedule, glared at the obnoxious smiley face and hearts at the bottom of the page, and sent Stiles a text that was ninety percent profanity and threats.

Stiles responded with promises of blowjobs.

Considering how much he hated that cat, and vice versa, Derek thought he did a pretty good job following the directions. Dale thought otherwise, bit at his toes while he tried to eyeball _exactly one fifth_ of a can of cat food, and then vomited the whole thing up in his shoe just as he was about to leave.

That fucking cat was so lucky he was kind of sort of completely in love with Stiles and didn’t want to ruin it by killing his cat just a few months into their relationship.

 _Stiles_ was lucky that Derek cared enough about his security deposit to not punch a hole in the wall of his new apartment.

And so the routine continued. Derek came in three times a day, Dale tried to maim him within the first few minutes, and then she systematically destroyed Stiles’ belongings while Derek tried to figure out the _exact_ combination that wouldn’t make her vomit everywhere (read, in his shoes).

The two dollar foam flip-flops he’d bought specifically for the apartment said something about how well that’d been going.

Stiles’ only advice on that front was: _she’s lonely, play with her doofus._

But Dale didn’t _want_ to play. She wanted to bury her little teeth into his hand and knock his stuff off the table, gnaw on the corners of textbooks Stiles left out, thunder across the table and spill Derek’s coffee all over everything. He tried throwing around stuffed mice for her to chase or waving around that stupid cat fishing pole with feathers and little bells, and she stared at him like he was an idiot.

She slapped him in the face with her tail as much as possible and made sure to land directly on his crotch when she bounded across the sofa. He shoved her off to sit down and intentionally didn’t try to step around her when she wound her way around his feet. He was constantly scratched up and her tail had been stepped on three times.

He hated Dale and she hated him.

Given the battle royale going on between them, it was no surprise that it took Derek a few days to realize that the scratching at the baseboards wasn’t actually Dale being an asshole behind the couch like he’d originally assumed. The thumps from the bedroom wasn’t her jumping at light reflections from passing cars, she wasn’t the one running off with his keys, and the crash he’d just heard wasn’t her nudging important keepsakes to the floor.

He looked from Dale, sitting next to him on the couch specifically to stare at him while he read, to the bedroom where the crash had come from. Dale had jumped up in alarm, unblinking eyes fixed on the same point.

Derek closed his book and listened, scenting the air for any signs of intruder. No extra heartbeats, no foreign smells, just the usual scent of Stiles, Derek, and Dale, hints of Scott and the rest of the pack lingering. He would’ve heard the fire escape window opening, he made sure it was still locked every time he left, so there was no way there was anyone else in the apartment.

Dale tensed and leapt from the couch, padding off towards the bedroom, quick but cautious. Derek stood to follow her—Stiles would never forgive him if she got kidnapped _(catnapped?)_ on his watch—and then ran when he heard her surprised yelp and hiss.

The bedroom was empty.

Just Dale, hissing and backing away, and the carved wooden box that had been Stiles’ mother’s on the floor, the odds and ends he kept in it scattered. The navy blue sheets were the same amount of unmade as they had been when Stiles left, the shirts he’d rejected while packing were still strewn across the bed, the stupid tiny cactus was still dying on the windowsill. Hell, the room still smelled like the sex they’d had right before Scott picked up Stiles to go to the airport and the soap from the shower he’d made Stiles take because _he refused to sit next to that stench on the plane._

And yet Dale was still growling from the doorway, bright eyes fixed on the space by the bedside table where the box had landed.

“Dale, what—”

The cat hissed, back arching up and her tail poofing out at the same moment Derek felt every hair on his body stand on end in a full body shiver. The air in the apartment expanded, growing thick and filling every corner until it was hard to breathe it in, sitting heavy on Derek’s shoulders.

In the main room, the bookshelf exploded.

At least, that’s what it seemed to do. One minute it was fine and the next, the shelves were crooked and falling out, and every book was rocketing across the room with loud crashes and thuds on impact. The lamp in the corner shattered when a hardcover copy of _Sandman_ punched it off its table. A framed family picture of the three Stilinskis nearly took out Dale. She launched herself under the bed, her fat tail poking out from under the comforter.

Stiles fucking lived in a haunted apartment. _Of fucking course._

The heaviness evaporated as quickly as it had come, leaving the apartment and Derek altogether disturbed and a little worse for wear. Everything was calm again, sunshine filtering in through the white blinds and the fridge humming happily, Dale’s frantic and loud purring from under the bed as she tried to calm down.

There was a hurried knock at the door.

_“Stiles? Is everything okay in there?”_

Derek jumped and hurried to the door, yanking it open to Stiles’ neighbor, a young woman who lived directly below with her husband and little daughter. She started, staring up at Derek with wide eyes. He quickly threw on his _charming distraction smile,_ as Stiles called it when he claimed it didn’t work, and hoped she remembered seeing him with Stiles so she wouldn’t think he had broken in or something.

“Hi, sorry, everything’s fine.” He leaned against the doorframe casually, trying to block her view into the apartment without being too obvious about it. Something crashed and shattered in the bedroom that sounded like a dying cactus finally coming to its end. Dale streaked past the door, hissing. “Cat jumped on a bookshelf and broke the whole thing. IKEA furniture, you know.” He nodded his head towards the downed bookcase and the sea of books covering the room.

Amanda nodded slowly, still looking thrown, but she calmed down as they chatted a bit. By the time he declined her offer to help straighten up the books, she was thoroughly charmed and distracted (suck it, Stiles) and left after inviting Derek and Stiles to dinner sometime soon.

He closed the door behind her and marveled at the mundaneness of that interaction while a ghost molested Stiles’ property right behind him, and then took out his phone to call Deaton.

*

“Everything you’re describing sounds more like a poltergeist than a standard haunting.” Deaton explained while Derek took a moment to recognize that they were, in fact, discussing _hauntings._ He shouldn’t have been as thrown as he was, he was a werewolf after all, but _ghosts._ They apparently _existed._ And they were in _Stiles’ apartment._

“Okay, how do we get rid of it?” He gestured to the books he’d stacked on the floor instead of putting back on the shelf. No point in giving the _poltergeist_ more ammo. “If something like this happens while Stiles is here, he could get seriously hurt.”

Not to mention Dale, who was still an anxious mess and hadn’t come out from under the couch, even when he offered her tuna. She definitely barfed under there too, he could smell it.

“I’m surprised something like this hasn’t happened before today. From what I’ve read, things will only get worse from here, so we should take care of this tonight.” He held up a tote bag from the local farmer’s market; the smell of various herbs made Derek’s nose itch. “Conveniently, it’s a full moon tonight, which should give us an extra boost to banish it.”

It was also Friday night, conveniently, when Amanda’s family went out for dinner and a movie, and Stiles’ bachelor neighbor across the hall went out on the prowl. Anyone who would be able to hear anything suspect would be gone.

“What do we need to do?”

“We’ll have to smudge the apartment.” He pulled a smudge stick out of his bag and Derek could practically hear Stiles’ dumb stoner jokes in reaction. “Poltergeists feed off of negative energy, which seems to have gathered here for one reason or another, probably from the previous tenants since Stiles has only lived here a couple of months. I’ve also brought citrine quartz to keep more negative energy from forming after we’re done.”

As if the poltergeist heard what they were saying, the mug Derek had used earlier slid off the kitchen counter and shattered on the tile. At least it had been one of the bland IKEA mugs and not one of Stiles’ favorites that he picked up from who knows where. It would be easy to replace.

“I wasn’t entirely certain that sage would be enough to take care of our problem, so I’ve included a splinter of the Nemeton, which we’ll have to ask for protection—I’ll need your help for that part and the actual smudging.”

Even knowing that it was benevolent now and hadn’t caused a problem in years, Derek didn’t want to touch any part of that tree with a ten foot pole.

“Shouldn’t you do it? You _are_ an emissary.”

Deaton smiled his unnervingly enigmatic smile like he knew exactly how Derek felt.

“Ideally, Stiles would do it. Not only is he an emissary who grew up within a few miles of the Nemeton, but it’s been inside his head, he has a strong connection to it. Since he’s not here and we need to do this as soon as we can, your family’s connection to the land and in turn the tree will have to do." He handed Derek the smudge stick and pulled a candle and a brown clay bowl out of his bag.

Derek just watched, somewhat bemused and in a kind of numb, disbelieving shock as Deaton lit the candle with a hot pink Bic lighter. Another dish crashed to the floor in the kitchen.

Derek lit the smudge stick from the candle, took the clay bowl to hold underneath it, and started to slowly walk through the apartment from the door, waving the smoke through the air as instructed and repeating the short verse invoking the protection of the Nemeton. Almost immediately, a slightly gnawed on textbook flew off the table and just missed Derek’s shin. Dishes and bottles shattered in the kitchen, the books he’d stacked scattered, and the television switched itself on, cycling through channels and static.

“Keep going!” Deaton yelled over the noise, one step behind Derek and conveniently out of the line of fire of Stiles’ belongings smashing against walls. He placed a raw piece of citrine in each room, out of sight and out of the way.

Just like earlier, the air grew heavy and thick, the temperature plummeted. The heater kicked on automatically in response and Dale hissed from under the couch.

They moved methodically through each room, dodging toothbrushes and office supplies while Deaton constantly reminded him to visualize the negative energy disappearing into the smoke from the smudge stick. All he could visualize was his face getting hit with that hardcover edition of _Sandman_ twitching on the floor.

The apartment was chaos; banging on pipes and walls, things flying this way and that, faucets turning on and off. Every instinct told Derek to grab Deaton and Dale and run, but Stiles _liked_ this apartment, damn it. He’d waxed poetic about the _actual tile, not linoleum_ in the kitchen and bathroom, and then adamantly denied crying when he saw the functional dishwasher included. After an actual trickster for a roommate and all the bullshit he’d been through trying to find his own place, Derek wasn’t about to let a poltergeist ruin this for him.

An unopened beer bottle whizzed past his face and smashed against the fridge, and foamy dark beer splattered over everything _and_ Derek. A fancy local stout, if he wasn’t mistaken, that Stiles had bought for him to try. In the bedroom, the remains of the poor, dead cactus slapped into the wall and dirt rained down onto the bed, shirts wrapped themselves around Derek’s limbs, and a belt that Stiles never wore tried to strangle him. He was throwing it in the dumpster out back as soon as this was over.

“Almost done, just the rest of the living room!” Deaton was trying to be encouraging, but all Derek could think of was the full wall of books that were now projectile weapons that only seemed to be aimed at him. The vet had been hit by all of a bathroom towel and a plastic figurine of Iron Man. “It will get more violent once it’s completely cornered, but you can’t let yourself get distracted!”

So Derek braced himself and entered the last few paces of the ritual. Objects started whirling into a frenzied pace and the lights flickered until the bulb exploded inside the light fixture. As expected, a hardcover textbook collided solidly with his knee.

Deaton stepped away from him and placed the last cut of citrine quartz on the window sill, muttering the same verse he’d used in every other room, and just as Derek reached the front door where he started, everything stopped and he could breathe again. The air lightened and warmed and one last plate dropped to the tile and shattered. His instincts slowly stood down, and he felt the wolf retreating with the blue in his eyes.

Derek stared around the now-calm apartment, taking in the sea of books sprawled across everything, stray pages fluttering down to land on the floor. One of the blinds had been ripped down, glass from the lamp that had once been in the corner littered the furniture, and a copy of _Wired_ was half embedded into the television, sparking and smoking quietly.

Dale’s frantic heartbeat thudded loudly from under the couch and Derek kind of wanted to join her there.

*

It was just an hour before Stiles got back that Derek finally finished cleaning up the substantial damage the poltergeist had done. He tried to make it look like nothing had happened, if Stiles knew his apartment had been haunted he would move out in a second whether he loved the place or not and that was the last thing Derek wanted, but there were minor dents in the drywall, the paint was scuffed in places, and the bookshelves were a little crooked.

He’d had to replace half of the dishes in the kitchen, clean out the fridge after the vegetable drawer and a bottle of ketchup apparently exploded, buy two new lamps and a television, and try to put everything back in at least the general vicinity of where they had been. The bookshelf was a lost cause; he’d just shoved all of the books back in whatever order that he found them in, no one really knew what organization system Stiles used, if any. There must’ve been _some_ kind of system, he always knew where everything was.

Completely worn out from the longest week of his life, he made himself at home in Stiles’ bed with a book because he deserved it, and Dale—still traumatized and a little clingy to even a werewolf—crawled in to join him not long after. Apparently exorcising a poltergeist together and saving her life was all the bonding experience they needed to form a probationary friendship. She still vomited on his flip-flops after every meal.

The front door opened, followed by a lot of banging around and things falling and then angry footsteps towards the open bedroom door.

“So, the Bennett pack is every bit the great big bag of dicks we thought and more.” Stiles announced as he entered and let his duffel fall from his shoulder. Derek looked up from his book and stopped petting Dale.

Stiles looked… Well, pissed off, exhausted, and completely _done;_ his left arm in a sling, a gauze bandage taped to his left temple, and a scabbed over scrape on his left cheekbone and side of his jaw. He looked like he got dragged over a gravel driveway, which was definitely a possibility with the Bennett pack if Derek remembered their main house correctly.

 _“Apparently,”_ Stiles started off angrily as he kicked his duffel away, “my closing handshake isn’t _satisfactory,_ so their dickhead alpha crushed my hand. I still can’t feel my fingers!” He paced around the bed, right arm waving through the air. “Oh, and their emissary? Fucking _batshit psycho._ I’m pretty sure she lit my chair on fire at dinner just to test my reaction time.”

He wandered past the window, the dying cactus noticeably absent but he didn’t comment.

“Not to mention that one of the betas kept making passes at Scott even though he made it very clear that’s he’s married, and she fucking _threw a dagger at his face_ when he told her he didn’t want to make werewolf babies with her. _A dagger, Derek.”_ He emphasized with extreme red-eyed eye contact when that didn’t solicit the appropriate response. _“Aimed at Scott’s face.”_

Derek nodded in understanding and watched calmly as Stiles turned for another lap.

“And when they go running on the full moon? The humans have to go too, so you know, _me,”_ he gestured to his scraped up face, “running through unfamiliar woods with a pack of strange wolves after me, because _humans are apparently prey_ —three of them fucking tackled me! Into a river! _With very sharp rocks at the bottom!”_

He wandered within reach, still ramping up, so Derek snagged his shirt and pulled him back onto the bed. As expected, that didn’t hinder his ranting.

“And here’s the kicker,” he continued as Derek looped an arm around him and drew him into his side; if Stiles was ranting he was okay, _“they_ were unsure of signing the treaty because they said that we have a quote, _concerning history as a pack_ — _we_ do, and all this while Scott’s face is still healing from a _dagger_ and my arm is in a sling. And not only that,” Derek put his book down and ran his fingers up into Stiles’ hair, preparing, “but we had to google the nearest emergency room because no one wanted to stop eating lunch long enough to—”

He tried to keep going even with his lips pressed firmly into Derek’s, but he eventually gave up and relaxed. Derek pulled back and gave him a proper kiss that wasn’t solely to get him to shut up and breathe for a second. Stiles blinked at him for a moment, rebooting.

“Hi.”

Derek couldn’t help smiling. “Hi.”

“Everything is terrible.”

“So I heard.”

“But Isaac can go to UW.”

“That’s good.”

“I think they felt guilty because one of their betas nearly tore off his arm. I can’t be sure, they might be sociopaths.”

“Probably.”

Stiles stretched up for another kiss then squirmed around further into Derek’s side, making himself right at home. Derek went back to his book, finally at ease with a poltergeist-less apartment and Stiles under his arm.

“Why are you cuddling with Dale?” The question came out muffled into Derek’s shoulder. Apparently Stiles _had_ noticed the less than amicable relationship he and the cat maintained before. Which made him even more of a dick for making Derek take care of her; his favorite boots still smelled like cat vomit.

“We’ve reached an understanding.”

Derek felt Stiles’ eyebrows move in a silent question against his chest, but he left it at that. Derek turned the page, Dale started to purr, and Stiles started to drop off to sleep, but before the final slip into unconsciousness, he added:

“By the way, I don’t want to know why it smells like sage in here.”

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> [Tumblr](http://andavs.tumblr.com/)


End file.
